


And There Were Flashes of Light

by zarabithia



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Renegade Dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-21
Updated: 2007-03-21
Packaged: 2019-05-20 08:09:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14890793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: Dick never stopped being Renegade.  Inevitably, he had to choose between Slade and his old family.  Barbara receives his compromise.





	And There Were Flashes of Light

Understandably, Barbara had paid excessive, arguably _obsessive,_ attention to the detail of her surroundings' security since the fateful day that she carelessly _hadn't._ Thus, the cool breeze that blew across her skin while she slept might have gone undetected by anyone else. But in addition to waking her up, the breeze also immediately alerted her to the fact that her normally secure window had been breached.

Based on the patient way her intruder stood watching her from the side of her bed, he apparently had anticipated that the breeze would be enough to wake her. Considering all she and Dick had been through, Barbara supposed that shouldn't be a surprise. But given how long he'd been away, she couldn't help but find it miraculous that he remembered anything about her or the world he'd abandoned.

Perhaps it was his long absence from everything that they'd both once called home that prevented Barbara from fully swallowing the knot of fear that had been her initial reaction to the security breach. It remained firmly lodged in her throat as she locked eyes with her intruder.

"Oracle," he greeted with a coolness that contrasted sharply with the broken man who had once clung to her lap and cried over every loss that this one didn't seem to remember ever having cherished. "Your security is disappointingly lax. I would have thought for sure you'd know better by now."

Ignoring the pain that sliced through her chest at the callous intended meaning of his words, she forced herself up into an upright position. Though she tried to be as covert as possible as she checked the status of the communication devices that would have brought the rest of her team to her aide, apparently the battle skills she'd hadn't used in years were a little rusty, because Renegade laughed at her efforts. Perching himself on the foot of her bed - close enough to touch, if that rigid posture reclined twenty degrees - he brought his knees up to his chest and fixed her with a gaze that she was sure was patronizing beneath the mask. The low chuckle could have been easily passed for a growl, had it not been for the cruel smile that accompanied the sound. "Honestly, Barbara, after all the nights I lied next to you, you really shouldn't be amazed that I've disarmed all your little toys."

He was right. The oldest child of the Bat had always been very thorough. It might have been just as well that he'd disabled her ability to call for backup. Renegade's skills were unmatched. While her agents were good, there was no way she could guarantee their survival against him. Not considering the man he'd become.

The same feeling of helplessness that she'd worked so hard to never experience again since she'd woken up in that hospital bed all those years ago was engulfing her, nearly drowning her ability to breathe calmly, and would have, if she hadn't been grabbing desperately at every trick taught reluctantly and unconsciously by Bruce.

She didn't think of the girl she'd been, the one whose optimism had led her to believe that she'd use every Bat-trick she'd learned to fight criminals. That foolish girl had never dreamed that she'd ever use those tricks to force herself to remain calm in front of the man who had come dangerously close to being her life partner.

But remaining in control was important now more than ever. Because the costume he wore may have been a mix of too-dark-to-be-Robin red and the black that didn't belong on _Dick's_ costume at all, but the way his black boots curled under him looked enough like pixie boots to remind her that the man sitting at the foot of her bed had also been trained by Batman. Which meant that he could read every expression as well as his former mentor. But as Renegade, his potential exploitation of her weaknesses had far more dire consequences than Bruce had ever intended to instill in any of his protégés.

Thus, she answered him with a calm voice that didn't match the bumps the stray breeze had caused to form along her arms. "What do you want, Renegade?"

"So direct and to the point," he mused, his smile almost relaxing to the point where it would have been a familiar one. "And formal too."

"That's generally my policy when known assassins make themselves at home at the foot of my bed."

The smile disappeared. "I've never killed anyone who didn't deserve it."

He was telling the truth. The list that Barbara kept of Dick's kills was updated continuously, even though each background check on every victim made her worry for the day that stopped being true. "For now. But, then, there was a time when you didn't kill at all."

"I grew up."

"Or your morals altered to suit the company you keep."

Her Bat skills were not quite developed enough to read face shifts with the same accuracy as the rest of her adopted family, so she had to wait for until the snarl settled over Dick's features to fully comprehend the success of her nerve-hit. "I _like_ the company I keep," he responded, tottering on the edge of her blanket in a manner that made Barbara remember a flight on a trapeze from a lifetime ago. Or, at least, an identity ago. "It's rather refreshing to have a _partner_ who doesn't push me away."

All the Bat training in the world didn't stop her from wincing at the confirmation of every rumor that had ever been whispered by both hero and villain communities. The grin she received in response to the pain that she hadn't been able to suppress was that of a marksman proud of the deadly precision of his aim.

Fleetingly, she entertained the possibility that she'd truly failed so badly at their relationship that Slade Wilson could be compared favorably against her.

It wasn't the first time she shouldered responsibility for the man Nightwing had become and although his mind games were impressive, Barbara had been raised by one man who knew everything there was to know about mind games and had worked in the shadow of another.

And they had both taught her that the best way to deal with mind games was to cut right through them. It had been good advice, and as much as Barbara liked to follow good advice, she chose instead to cover up her previous emotional slip-up with a mind-jerk of her own. "Does your partner know you're here?"

There was a quirk of his head that made her think of a yellow cape draped across a dark horizon, and matching yellow boots worn by someone else. "What possible reason would Deathstroke have for sending me here alone?"

"I can think of several." She was trying not to, as the mental slide show of bodies of her agents and friends were real enough in her thoughts to make the lump in her throat that hadn't yet left grow even tighter. "Namely, to serve as distraction."

The slow rocking he'd been doing ceased and his body went still. "You really don't know me at all. Probably never did."

It was not exactly a denial, but it was enough of one that the imaginary compression lifted from her chest. "I thought I did. But thirty-eight dead bodies tell me otherwise."

"You assumed the worst of me long before I killed Frank Dixon," Renegade argued, and Barbara felt the tiniest bit of hope at the fact that she wasn't the only person who knew the seemingly insignificant drug dealer's name by heart.

She wondered if he had the other thirty-seven memorized too.

"I won't take responsibility for what you've become." It wasn't exactly the truth, but in the Gordon book of morals, there was an exemption policy that allowed lying to killers. Even the kind that perched on the foot of her bed. Perhaps especially those kind. "I'm sorry I hurt you, but you made your own decisions."

Dick's nose twitched, and Barbara tried not to think of coughing spells following that first, unfamiliar dusting by Ivy. "I didn't come here to fight. I came here to tell you that Slade accepted a contract on Oracle."

It wasn't unbelievable. On the contrary, she'd expected it to happen sooner. But she couldn't think of a reason why Renegade would warn her beforehand. If anything, she'd grown to accept the possibility that the day would come, when the kills stopped being "people who deserved them," that Dick himself would be on the trigger-end of gun sent to eliminate her.

"So the answer to your question is no, Slade doesn't know I'm here."

"You want me to believe that you came here to warn me?" The degree to which she _wanted_ to believe it, wanted to believe that there was enough of her Robin left . . . the strength of that impulse was a distracting weakness.

"Is that so hard for you to believe?"

"You've never been the kind to sell out your partner. It's a little unimaginable that you'd start doing so now."

He stood up, abruptly, and frowned down at her with shoulders that shook so slightly she wouldn't have been able to tell, had it not been for the contrasting stiffness of his shoulders. "I stopped being the good little soldier the minute I put this costume on and left Batman behind for good. My days of mindless worship are over."

"You used to think of it as boundless loyalty. They aren't the same."

"No, they aren't. That's why I'm here." His hand reached out, grasping hers in his. It was light enough of a touch that she could pull away easily, and probably should have.

But she didn't. Because the touch belied the smell of gunpowder, the cruelty of a known serial killer, and the coldness of the man who'd left his family behind. Instead, as his gloved fingers caressed hers, the gentleness reminded her of the little boy who'd loved her as a both as a vigilante and as woman who'd struggled to come to deal with the loss of everything she'd been. The latter had pushed Dick away and Slade Wilson had gladly taken him in, but before that . . . before that _mistake_ she'd been on the receiving end of the very same patient touches.

Those touches had been firmer, of course. The lightness of his thumb brushing over her knuckles held the same tentativeness as the glances Robin had once stolen at Batgirl, when he'd thought she wasn't looking.

It was that memory that made her beg - something she hadn't done since the day she'd opened the door to the wrong visitor.

"Stay with _us_."

She received a forlorn little smile in response. "That's the first time you've ever said that to me when I was ready to leave."

Ignoring the guilt and possibility of a mind game, she continued, voice no longer begging but still pleading, "If you can still make the decision to come here and warn me, you can make the decision to walk away from Deathstroke. Away from Renegade."

He dropped her hand, and Barbara relived the loss of every one of his touches as he stepped away from her and back towards the window. "The first bullet erased any chance I had of coming back to the life I used to live, Barbara. Of all people, I would think you would be able to appreciate that."

"Yes I do. I also know that one bullet doesn't mean you have to give up."

His laugh matched the darkness of his costume. "I didn't give up. I moved on."

When he turned his back to her, the pleading was no longer about her, or the little boy she used to know. It was instead a determination not to add any more names to that list. "And when Deathstroke kills me, is that what you're going to tell yourself?"

"I can't tell Deathstroke which contracts he can accept, and which ones he can't, anymore than he can choose which contracts I accept. Our relationship doesn't work that way. He isn't Batman. I'm not Robin. He doesn't tell me to jump; I don't ask how high." Fists tightened at his side, and Barbara was simultaneously glad and frustrated that she couldn't see his face. "I warned you. That's the best I could do."

"I see. Will that reasoning help you sleep better at night when he kills Tim? Or Bruce? Or any of your Titan family?"

The hands relaxed at his side. "Get yourself some better security, Oracle."

Still blessed with acrobat grace, he was gone before she could formulate a reply. All that remained from his visit was an open window and the faint smell of gunpowder on the hand he had touched.


End file.
